Each year, Forbes Magazine releases its Forbes 400—the list of the 400 richest Americans. For the first time, in 2006 each of these 400 individuals is a billionaire.
In the accompanying article, the magazine smugly notes, “A nine-figure fortune won’t get you much mention these
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Collectively, these 400 individuals possess $1.25 trillion, up from $1.13 trillion last year, an increase of $120 billion.
This exceeds the combined wealth of 57 million U.S. households. It is more than one-tenth of the U.S.’s gross domestic product. The GDP is the market value of all final goods and services produced by a country’s workers in one year, including production by prison labor.
As the number of U.S. billionaires reaches a record high, the share of national income going to wages and salaries is shrinking. The number of people in the United States experiencing severe poverty—having incomes less than half of the poverty line—is at an all-time high.
On a worldwide scale, the holdings of these 400 individuals exceed the combined income of the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people. They own more wealth than nearly 40 percent of the world’s population, or approximately the combined populations of south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America.
Most of these 400 U.S. billionaires acquired their fortunes by preying on the poor. Among the top 11, five are heirs to the Wal-Mart founders, Sam and Bud Walton. They have a combined $82.5 billion. Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
The vast Walton family riches are due to Wal-Mart’s use of sweatshop labor, low wages and meager, if any, health and retirement benefits. Most Wal-Mart workers earn only slightly more than the minimum wage. At least 46 percent lack health insurance.
Developer John Manning, another on the Forbes list, acquired a fortune of $1.1 billion by brokering low-income housing projects.
Forbes also marveled at how quickly these billionaires acquired their vast riches. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the third-richest American, more than doubled his fortune from $9 billion to $20.5 billion in the last year—an average of more than $1 million a minute. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google Inc., made about $26 million per day over the past two years.
Criminal billionaires steal from workers
Wages for U.S. workers have remained stagnant since the mid-1970s. The median income of the 105.9 million full-time wage and salary workers in the United States is $34,268 per year. Although this amount is higher than that of most workers around the world, it is lower than the cost of living for most U.S. families.
A disproportionate number of U.S. workers have jobs that pay minimum wage or just above it. Since 1997, the federal
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This is the same, age-old formula by which the ruling class ensures that the working class shoulders the major burden of taxes. Thirty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have caused the effective tax rate for the richest Americans to drop from 60 percent to 34 percent. Moreover, flat taxes, like sales taxes and the 12.4 percent payroll tax, disproportionately impact the working class
It is a crime that super-rich capitalists are allowed to keep the wealth created for them by workers, while more and more workers struggle to have adequate food, shelter and access to health care. The Forbes 400 really should be the “400 Most Wanted” for grand theft from the entire working class.
If the 400 wealthiest members of the U.S. ruling class had their incomes reduced to the median U.S. income, the $1 trillion in excess wealth could be used to address human needs.
With only a fraction of this sum, enough housing units could be built to house all of the homeless, all the uninsured could receive free health insurance, and hundreds of thousands of new teachers could be hired.
The real decision makers
Many of the Forbes 400, such as Bill Gates, the richest American, with $53 billion in assets, recently made their fortunes in high-tech industries. Although these people are unquestionably part of the ruling class, they are not the real power brokers or decision makers.
But their interests are the same. Together these capitalists rule society and exert control over every aspect of life—wages, politics, access to food, schools, art, health benefits and more.
Dislodging these capitalists from their perches of power is the goal of revolutionaries in this country and across the globe.
When the working class takes the capitalists’ wealth and power and controls society in the interests of the majority of people, workers’ suffering will be addressed and alleviated.
